Florida, Texas book bans show conservatives are leading US down road to ignorance

Books and ideas are the latest ‘culture war’ casualties, dispatched by a new generation of anti-intellectuals led by the governors of Florida and Texas
The banning of books touching on race, slavery, racism and LGBTQ issues shows powerful conservatives feel threatened by an accurate recounting of US history

Stephen J. Lyons

Published: 6:21am, 8 Feb 2023

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I am grateful to have lived in the golden age of the United States when I could read any book I wanted. Today, I look back with nostalgia at a time when I learned about Martin Luther King Jnr, Rosa Parks, the Battle of Wounded Knee and this nation’s full participation in the slave trade and the forced resettlement of Native Americans.

My knowledge of my country’s past came not only through books but also throughout my years in the Chicago public school system and in the state universities I attended.

Books and ideas are now the newest “culture war” casualties. They have been dispatched by the latest class of anti-intellectuals, foremost among them the governors of Texas and Florida.

In a report titled “Banned in the USA: The Growing Movement to Censor Books in School”, PEN America has compiled one of the most comprehensive investigations of the nation’s disturbing trend in borrowing from the autocratic playbook of erasing truth while silencing minority voices of colour and of LGBTQ people.

The report is shocking. According to the non-profit that works to defend the freedom to write, there were 2,532 instances of individual books being banned in libraries and schools, affecting 1,648 unique book titles, between July 1, 2021, and June 30, 2022.

The titles are by 1,261 different authors, 290 illustrators and 18 translators, affecting the literary, scholarly and creative work of 1,553 people. Bans occurred in 138 school districts in 32 states. These districts represent 5,049 schools with a combined enrolment of nearly 4 million students.

Amanda Darrow, director of youth, family and education programmes at the Utah Pride Centre, poses on December 16, 2021, with books about which parents in Salt Lake City filed complaints. Photo: AP

And the two states with the largest number of book bans during that period? Texas (801 bans in 22 districts) and Florida (566 bans in 21 districts). Topics that local and state government censors and non-profit groups most objected to were books that looked at race, slavery, racism and LGBTQ issues.

Add to that list critical race theory (CRT), the punching bag du jour of the radical right, which loves to toss red meat to its supporters. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, who serves on the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, recently defined CRT this way: “It’s a racist curriculum used to teach children that somehow their white skin is not equal to black skin and other things in education.”

Not surprisingly, given her embrace of bizarre QAnon theories, her characterisation is horribly inaccurate. CRT evolved following the civil rights movement in the 1970s and 1980s.

The Legal Defence Fund defines it as “an academic and legal framework that denotes that systemic racism is part of American society – from education and housing to employment and healthcare. Critical race theory recognises that racism is more than the result of individual bias and prejudice…

“According to CRT, societal issues like Black Americans’ higher mortality rate, outsize exposure to police violence, the school-to-prison pipeline, denial of affordable housing and the rates of the death of Black women in childbirth are not unrelated anomalies.”

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I think of CRT as owning our past and present, using it as a framework to build a more equitable nation that gives everyone a fair chance at the American dream. Who could be threatened by that goal? As it turns out, plenty of white people in powerful government positions.

Take Ron DeSantis, Florida’s Yale- and Harvard-educated governor and a 2024 Republican presidential hopeful. DeSantis runs his fiefdom in an autocratic manner similar to the heads of state of Belarus and Hungary.

He held a press conference on January 31 to announce he was forbidding state universities from presenting programmes not only on CRT but also those that feature equity, diversity and inclusion. He claimed this would raise “the standards of learning and civil discourse of public higher education in Florida”.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis announces plans to ban critical race theory and other programmes at public universities during a press conference at the Bradenton campus of State College of Florida on January 31. Photo: TNS

Texas Governor Greg Abbott, when he is not trying to keep the lights on in his state, signed a similar bill in 2021. More states will follow the DeSantis road map to ignorance. This trend is not our friend.

Search for Nazi book banning images on Google and you will get about 24 million results. Do the same for US book banning images and you get about 630 million results.

Democracy can only survive with an educated populace that understands freedoms are paper-thin and can be taken away – slowly at first, then all of a sudden. History books are filled with examples. All one has to do is read about them, while you still can.

Stephen J. Lyons is the author of five books of essays and journalism, including “Going Driftless” and “West of East”